[JumpCrisscross]

> CIA involvement in something like this shouldn't be dismissed out of hand

Without evidence, yes, it should be. Just as it should be dismissed, if proposed without evidence, that this was the product of Indian, Chinese or Iranian meddling. Particularly when we have credible evidence going the other way of legitimate reasons a population would flip out.

[devsda]

US with its control of social media etc can push a narrative to instigate population of friendly or unfriendly countries. There's no way to know say for sure whether the protests were organic or inorganic.

Every country has problems that atleast look worthy of an uprising. CIA has both the means and the track record of messing with countries, so its natural to be suspicious.

If Russia had control of social media narrative in US and wanted to cause trouble, nobody would know for sure if an uprising was due to their meddling or due to current political climate.

Lack of evidence doesn't prove or disprove anything.

[keybored]

How even-handed and fair.

These entities are in the business—by their very nature—to lie and hide their activities as much as possible.[1] To dismiss speculation out-of-hand because it has no evidence is ludicrous.

[1] Not only that but to actively push counter-narratives.

[snapcaster]

Please go through the article I linked and find some 20th century examples. _at the time of the conspiracy_ there was no solid evidence of their involvement. That implies your method isn't actually a good way to be aware of the ones the CIA is _actually doing_ versus authoritarians coping for their own failures

[AnimalMuppet]

When the CIA does something, we at the time don't know that the CIA is doing it (if they're doing it competently). That is true.

But run the experiment the other way. A friend of mine once said that if a light bulb burns out on Tierra Del Fuego, somebody claims that it's a CIA conspiracy. Of all the public claims (gated by some level of seriousness or authority) of CIA involvement, what fraction turned out to be true?

[snapcaster]

Does the CIA have a longstanding documented history of burning out light bulbs? because they do for coups and other regime change efforts